The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Over 35,000 fowls were culled following bird flu outbreaks in three districts of Borguna, Rajshahi and Jessore in the past week, official sources said.

Experts fear the H5N1 strain could mutate and pass on to humans. However, no human infections have so far been reported in the country.

Some 11,243 chickens, ducks and pigeons were slaughtered and 2,000 eggs were destroyed in Barguna, Patuakhali and Dinajpur districts in last two days after detection of avian influenza. Suspected outbreaks were also reported at a farm in Rangpur, where the virus has resurfaced.

Bangladesh needs house-to-house surveillance to fight bird flu because the situation has worsened and is "posing a danger to public health," the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations said on Thursday.

"The situation has worsened in the past week compared to the first few months of the outbreak. The international community is very concerned," FAO's Bangladesh chief Ad Spijkers said.

"We took the concern to the Minister on Wednesday and donors are going to meet with the government very soon to discuss comprehensive measures to fight the disease. It's posing a danger to public health," he said adding, "The government should do active house-to-house surveillance to control the disease."

Bangladesh border security forces were put on high alert on Thursday to stop the transport of poultry from India's West Bengal state, where authorities are struggling to control a massive bird flu outbreak, agencies reported.

Since Bangladesh's first bird flu outbreak in March last year, the disease has been detected in 26 out of the country's 64 districts, prompting authorities to slaughter at least 355,000 birds.

Officials said the situation has worsened in the past week but the disease remains contained. "We don't think the situation is as bad as in West Bengal," said Salahuddin Khan, Director of Livestock Department.

Experts differed, saying the situation was far worse than the government claims, with farmers holding back from reporting many cases. "Bird flu is now everywhere. Every day we have reports of birds dying in farms," M M Khan, leading poultry expert and the treasurer of Bangladesh Poultry Association, said last weekend.

The situation was serious and public health was in danger, Khan said. "The government is trying to suppress the whole scenario."

The FAO country chief said the world's most densely-populated nation faced a "delicate situation" since the poultry industry employs five million people.

"It's tough to impose movement control in a small country populated by more than 144 million people. It has become a sensitive and difficult issue as the livelihoods of a lot of people depends on birds," Speakers said.